Unveiling Ahalya: Desire, Agency and Feminist Resistance in Koral Dasgupta's Ahalya
Shaswati Goswami &
Dr Prachi Priyanka,
Sharda University,
Greater Noida, Uttar
Pradesh, India.
Myths have always been there to weave the human culture. The presence of different religious beliefs is somewhere an influence of the mythological stories that have been passed down from ancient times through oral culture until it was finally written and recorded. The origin of Indian mythology can be traced back from the Satya Yuga, written and recorded in scriptures, vedas, puranas and epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata.This existing body of myths have however been tried to provide a newer perspective in the contemporary literature by voicing the characters who have either been subjugated in the hands of patriarchy or were least talked about. One such contemporary writers, Koral Dasgupta have aimed to provide a fresh perspective about the myth of Ahalya from the epic Ramayana by shifting the story’s perspective to Ahalya’s.
The
original myth of Ahalya according to the Hindu mythology centers around her
creation by Brahma, who himself crafted her, shaping her with such precision
and grace that she seemed to blur the boundary between mortal and celestial.
She became the bride of Gautama, a venerable sage known for his discipline and
ascetic power. Their life was quiet, secluded within the sanctuary of the
forest. One morning, as the first rays filtered through the forest canopy,
Indra, king of the gods, descended. He had long desired her, intoxicated not
just by her beauty but by the idea of possessing something even the gods
revered. Disguising himself as her husband, he entered the hermitage when the
sage was away. Valmiki's Ramayana suggests that Ahalya, though momentarily
aware of the deception, did not resist, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps due
to a lapse in clarity. When Gautama returned, he saw through the illusion and
cursed both Indra and Ahalya. She was turned into a stone and her redemption,
as stated by Valmiki, would be marked years after when Rama would enter the
abandoned ashram and touch her with his feet.
Koral Dasgupta’s Ahalya, the first book of the Sati
series, reimagines the mythological figure of Ahalya not as a silent, passive
figure punished for her supposed transgressions, but as an agent of her own
becoming. As Dasgupta tells the story of the Panch Kanyas in her
Sati Series, she also tries to contemplate the already established concept of
virginity and brings an emphasis on women's inner truth and that she is
responsible only to herself and not on what is held by the society. With the reclaiming of Ahalya's story, the concept
of female desires has also been studied extensively. The modern feminists have
thus offered a lens to questions male dominance and female subjugation.
This paper examines Koral Dasgupta’s Ahalya through
a feminist lens, focusing on the novel’s reclamation of desire, agency and
resistance in retelling the mythological figure of Ahalya. Traditionally framed
as a cautionary tale of female desire punished through divine intervention,
Ahalya’s narrative in classical texts reflects patriarchal anxieties surrounding
women’s bodies and sexuality. Dasgupta’s retelling radically reimagines Ahalya
not as a passive victim or transgressor, but as a sentient, self-aware woman
who actively reclaims her voice, redefines her subjectivity and interrogates
the structures of male authority. By analyzing the narrative strategies,
symbolic reconfigurations and feminist underpinnings of the text, this paper
argues that Dasgupta’s Ahalya embodies a broader feminist resistance against
the silencing of women in myth and literature.
Dasgupta begins Ahalya’s journey not with her body,
but with her soul. As Brahma painstakingly crafts her physical form, her soul
roams freely, curious and questioning. In doing so, Dasgupta participates in
the very tradition Elaine Showalter calls for — writing women into literature
not as symbols, but as full, complex individuals. Her longing for a mother, answered only by the comforting mist, hints
at the central absence of maternal lineage in patriarchal myths and foreshadows
the emotional isolation she will carry. Her descent to earth is not glorified
but shown as a bodily struggle—walking slippery paths in an unfamiliar form,
lagging behind Sage Gautama. This bodily disorientation marks her entry into a
world where women are expected to perform roles they have not chosen. Initially
assigned no instruction, Ahalya begins self-imposed routines: cleaning the
hermitage, fetching water, quietly integrating herself into the sage’s world.
Her labor is invisible and unacknowledged, yet she performs it with care. Over
time, her maturation into adulthood is met by Brahma’s decision to marry her
off to Gautama. Ahalya does not resist violently, but her expression and inner
disquiet are clear—she recognizes Gautama is not her partner. Yet she complies,
not out of submission, but from the lack of choice within the
divine-patriarchal arrangement. The mist disappears—the only maternal
presence—and Ahalya enters marriage alone. In her marriage, she claims her
place not as a subordinate, but as a partner. When Gautama embarks on journeys
to teach and heal, Ahalya asserts her right to accompany him, reminding him of
her strength: “I can be the mother, the sister, the friend, the daughter... You
can mend their nerves and I will tend to their hearts” (Dasgupta, 2020, p. 110).
Her claim is not to replicate Gautama’s knowledge but to complement it through
nurturance and care—feminine contributions that were often sidelined. Her voice
articulates a complete understanding of herself, as healer and companion.
Despite her expanding role, Ahalya faces the scrutiny of the village—reduced to
whispers, accusations and lewd fantasies. Her presence becomes politicized,
interpreted through the lens of male insecurity. Yet she refuses to retreat.
She stays. She learns. She grows. Slowly, her bond with Gautama grows subtle
and sensual, transforming into mutual companionship. Their nights turn
intimate—not out of dominance, but shared presence. However, on one mystical
night, when Ahalya finds herself submitting to a figure who looks like Gautama
but feels different, the violation becomes layered. The following day when she
is left at the river bank all alone, her isolation is met with the quest to
find the sage. As she finds him sitting under a peepal tree, his disgusted eyes
meet her saying it was Indra who awakened his Indriyas the previous night, the
same Indriyas he has been trying to keep in control through his vigorous
discipline. Gautama accuses her of infidelity, blaming her for Indra’s deceit
and Ahalya is met with wound and awakening as she says “but my precious, was
his sin!”(Dasgupta, 2020, p. 160) Yet
she reflects: “What you are talking about is pure human instinct. That is what
keeps the world and its beings together. Affection isn’t disgrace, attraction
isn’t sin” (Dasgupta, 2020, p. 168).
Gautama curses her—not with death, but with
dormancy. To lie as a stone, untouched, unseen, removed from the sensual and
sentient world. Yet even in this moment of supposed defeat, Ahalya does not
internalize shame. Despite being condemned by patriarchal judgment, Ahalya
refuses to see herself as defiled. Instead, she re-narrates her past through
clarity and power. Gynocriticism urges scholars to examine women’s writing about
their bodies, sexuality and desire, without shame or erasure. Ahalya’s
sensuality is not written as sin but as part of her self-knowledge and
spiritual evolution. Her body is not merely a site of male possession or
violation—it is where she thinks, feels, resists and chooses.
Her thoughts about Indra are not filled with shame
or repentance; rather, they are contemplations of desire, unmet needs and
cosmic irony—a woman denied tenderness by the one who vowed union. “Could there
be a bigger insult to a man than an obstinate, ambitious wife unwilling to
yield to unfair sacrifices?”(Dasgupta, 2020, p. 182)
She knows her pleasure was not sin, and her body
not a battlefield for male ego. She predicts her future with clarity that she
will be remembered not as a cautionary tale but as Sati, the chaste and
dignified one—not because she conformed to norms, but because she lived
authentically, with the courage to choose, desire and resist, “because I have
given myself with all my knowledge and truth, my body and mind, to the only one
my soul ever connected with” (Dasgupta, 2020, p.196).
She embodies the feminist reimagination of myth: a
woman who was made still, but never silenced; who was made stone, but never
stripped of soul. She will stand strong, bearing time and weather, not as a
scandal but as a symbol—Sati, the first of the Panchakanyas. Gautama’s curse to turn her into stone doesnot marks
an end, but a pause in Dasgupta’s version. Ahalya’s final reflection imagines
her legacy not in shame, but in dignity.This aligns directly with Adrienne
Rich’s idea of re-vision, the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes,
of entering an old text from a new critical direction. She argues that feminist
writers must reclaim old narratives by reinterpreting them, challenging their
male-centered logic, and rewriting them to reflect women’s truth, experience,
and agency. It’s not just reinterpretation—it’s rebirth through resistance.
This allows women to rewrite their place in
history and memory—to move from absence to presence.
In her foundational feminist text The
Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir argued that women have been
historically defined not as autonomous beings, but in opposition to men, as
“the other.” She writes “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
That is, womanhood is a cultural construct,
shaped by male norms, morality, and expectations. Throughout history, woman has
been cast as the object, not the subject; the wife, not the thinker; the body, not the voice; the temptress, never the seeker of truth. De
Beauvoir’s work urges women to claim subjectivity, reject their mythic “otherness,”
and redefine their identity through experience, choice and authorship.
In the Ramayana, Ahalya is created by Brahma
for Gautama — she is not born, but designed. She is expected to be a silent
wife, untouched and obedient. Is blamed
for her pleasure or deception and is punished with dehumanisation, awaiting
redemption by a male (Rama).She is never treated as a person with desires,
doubts, or thoughts—only as a symbolic cautionary tale, her body used to
demonstrate the spiritual superiority of men. Koral Dasgupta’s Ahalya answers
de Beauvoir’s challenge: it returns the subjectivity to a woman which was long
denied. She thinks, questions, chooses, reflects and claims. Ahalya constructs
her own meaning, giving her experience epistemic value—she knows what it meant
to be her. She moves from the object of a divine curse to the subject of a
philosophical, emotional and mythic journey.
Koral Dasgupta’s Ahalya disrupts the traditional
narrative of guilt and punishment. It offers instead a story of becoming.
Ahalya's journey presents a woman who feels, chooses, questions, and resists.
Her sexuality, curiosity, and longing are not marks of her downfall but of her
humanity. The stone is not the end of her story—it is a pause, imposed by
others, but endured by her with resilience. Through Dasgupta’s re-telling,
Ahalya is no longer just a footnote in a male epic. She becomes the author of
her own legend—a woman not defined by the men around her, but by the woman she
becomes despite them. Ahalya is not a cautionary tale, she is a woman who dared
to feel, to choose and to stand in the fire of her truth.Ahalya “becomes” a
woman—not as men define her, but as she defines herself.
To sum up, Koral Dasgupta's book, Ahalya, has tried
to change the track of how her story was narrated in the mythological texts by
providing Ahalya the agency of her life and as someone who does not bend down
to patriarchal norms, rather takes her own decisions and goes beyond her wifely
duties. The novel rewrites Ahalya’s body not as a site of male shame but as a
terrain of emotional, erotic, and spiritual knowledge. Her silencing through
stone becomes not a symbol of guilt, but of patriarchal fear—a forced stillness
that preserves, rather than erases, her voice. In Dasgupta’s hands, Ahalya is
not remembered for transgression, but for her endurance, sensual clarity, and
refusal to be reduced to mythic moralism. She re-emerges not as a cautionary
tale but as a feminist emblem of resistance, becoming the author of her own
legend. With the careful use of literary theories like Elaine Showalter's
Gynocriticism, Adrienne Rich's Re-vision and Simone de Beauvoir's The Other
Sex, this paper has shed light onto how a mythological text is open to
reinterpretation while preserving the religious sentiments.
Works Cited
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Womanhood with Resolute Voice,”. Research
Journal of English Language and Literature. pp. 200-203.
Dasgupta, K. (2020). Ahalya.
Pan Macmillan India.
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Gaze- A Study of Koral Dasgupta’s Ahalya, in Relation to the Myth of Ahalya as
Mentioned in Valmiki’s Ramayana.” Global
Journal of Humanities. pp. 181-183.
Priyadarshi, S. (2024). “Reimagining Female Agency: Feminist
Perspectives on Indian Mythology and Culture”. International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts. pp. 698-701.
Shrimali, G.A. (2023). “Indian Mythology and Symbolism in the Select Works of Gita Mehta, Koral Dasgupta, Kavita Kane: An Analysis.” International Journal of Advanced Research in Science, Communication and Technology. pp. 19-20.